Perfect Storm
by mcmachine
Summary: AU. 9x24. Jackson gets hurt in the bus explosion and April refuses to standby.


**_APRIL_**

"Where's Jackson?" I asked desperately.

The rain pelted down against my skin as I chased after Callie and Owen, bringing in what would hopefully be the last of the victims from the bus that had flipped and crashed right outside of the hospital. It had been brutal to witness but many people had turned out in decent enough condition – which was pure luck, given how crazy things already were inside of the hospital. The backup generators had gone out. I had stocked up supplies best that I could, but it was impossible to predict what would go wrong.

"Right behind us," Callie answered without hesitation, pushing along to get the patient out of the brutal rain. I squinted, trying to make out his figure somewhere in the darkness.

"No, he's not," I answered after a moment, staring further.

It was hard to see in the dark, but I know that I would have recognized his form retreating from the bus, it would have stuck out. He was supposed to be right behind them, but he was nowhere to be seen. I squinted harder, hoping that he would become visible. He doesn't.

"We're not gonna be able to salvage any of this," Callie remarked, clearly having ignored the fact that I'd pointed out that Jackson was no longer with the two of them.

"I need to do a complete splenectomy to get control of the hemorrhage," Owen replied to her.

Shaking my head to myself and pushing their conversation away from the forefront of my mind, I step forward, holding my hand above my eyes to block out any rain from hitting it. He still wasn't there. He had to be somewhere – surely he wasn't still inside the bus… Just the thought alone forced my stomach to drop in pure terror at the thought. The bus was due to explode any moment. He couldn't be still inside of it.

"What happened? Can you see him?" Now it seemed like Callie was paying attention to what I had said earlier. "Wait, is that him behind the bus?"

"Avery!" Owen shouted. No. It couldn't possibly be…

"Jackson!" Callie screamed, trying to get his attention. I could smell the gas. Flames practically already covered the bus and it was only a matter of time before it completely went up.

"Avery, come back here!" Owen yelled again.

"Why is he–" I can't even get out the words and suddenly everyone was yelling at once. I don't think, my feet beginning to propel me in the direction of the bus, determined to get him out for myself if he wasn't going to be the one to do it.

"No! No!" Matthew yelled, following me quickly and grabbing me to keep me from going any closer.

"Avery, get back here!" The order doesn't mean anything. He can't hear us.

"April!" My fiancé tried to reason with me. I couldn't care less.

"What is he doing?!"

"No, no, no! It's too dangerous."

"Get back!"

Everything stops when the explosion goes off. The earth was no longer beneath my feet, instead, the force of the blast threw me back so that I collided with both Matthew and the concrete outside of the hospital. It aches and my ears rang, the world spinning around me when my eyes open and I blink a few times, trying to concentrate again. The rain was still there, the flames still lighted my vision of everything else around me.

But another constant was the fact that Jackson was still nowhere to be seen.

With a grunt, my hands meet the wet concrete and I pushed myself back to my feet as quickly as I could, barely stumbling over myself to get closer to the bus. It had already exploded – surely things on that end couldn't get any worse than what they already were.

"Jackson! Jackson!" I screamed out, desperate for him to suddenly appear, to have everything be alright. I didn't care how childish the fantasy may have been. I needed it.

Still, he didn't appear.

I'm not sure if the noises that left me made any sense, if it was his name or cries of something else, hauling myself as quickly as I could over toward the flames. The rain barely helped to keep any of it at bay, but it made it much easier to see, this close. Matthew screaming at me to get back didn't matter – nothing else mattered at the moment, I had to get him out of there, I had to make sure that he was alive, he needed help.

Tears beginning to swell in my eyes only made it that much harder to try and find him, but I wasn't about to give up – not for Matthew or Owen or Callie, not for anything in the world.

"He's here!" I waved my arms like a maniac to get Owen over here. "He's here!"

Pushing forward into the flames, I dragged the bus bench off of him and hooked my arms underneath his armpits so that I could begin to drag him toward the hospital. He was unconscious, soot and grime on him, but it was hard to give a proper assessment in the middle of dragging him. He's heavy.

"Come on, Jackson, c'mon," I grunted. "I've got you. I've got you."

"Here, let me help. I've got it." Matthew's help isn't wanted at the moment but it was needed. I moved so that he could grab his torso and I could grab his legs, knowing that it would be faster to just take the help.

"Owen!" I screamed, wanting him there. Jackson needed the best. That was Owen, not me.

"We've got this, April." Owen's voice was a minor comfort.

The sound of a little girl screaming grabbed my attention and I jerked up to look, realizing that there was a small girl – only a few years old, three or four, staring at us. Evie. One of the patients that we had brought in mentioned a daughter. Jackson must have gone back to look for her. She looked relatively unharmed, more scared than injured.

"Hey, hey!" I let Matthew and Owen get Jackson inside of the hospital, running over to the girl. "Hey, did he help you get out of the ambulance?" I had to know.

She gave a small nod of her head and I took a deep breath, trying to keep myself from overreacting. I don't want to scare her any more than she already was. She had been through enough tonight. "C'mon," I murmured, picking her up to carry her inside.

"Evie!" The last patient that Jackson and Owen had brought in called out for her daughter.

I set her down on her mother's lap. "Jackson went back to her."

I don't have anything else to say. I can't.

Rushing inside of the emergency room, it's just as chaotic as I could have imagined. There weren't quite enough rooms for everyone, patients on beds lined up to just leave enough room for others to get through. I should be triaging and treating. I need to be. There weren't enough doctors on hand, especially since Meredith had gone into labor, leaving no doubt her, Derek, and Cristina out of the picture for a little while. And now Jackson. We were short-staffed. But I wasn't going to be able to focus on a damn thing unless I knew that he was okay.

Matthew at least stuck out like a sore thumb among the other doctors and staff members because of the paramedic gear that he was wearing instead of scrubs – I find him first and realize that he's still with Owen and Jackson, hopefully trying to help.

"Hey." I was breathless when I finally caught up with them. "How's he doing?" I asked.

"Looks like he's got some internal bruising and bleeding. Portable ultrasound showed a laceration on his kidney. Pupils are reactive but seems like he hit his head pretty hard. Minor concussion but we paged Shepherd to come to check it out." He listed the facts quickly, like it's any other patient, and not my absolute best friend and my favorite person laying there unconscious.

"Shepherd's not going to answer. Meredith's in labor." I chewed at my lower lip, wide eyes staring at Jackson's unconscious form. "Matthew, go… go help others. I got this. I'm here." Mostly, I just don't want him there. Not right now.

"Are you sure?" Matthew added, staring at me.

I nodded my head quickly, letting out a relieved sigh when he turned in the other direction.

"Is there anything that you're not telling me?" I asked Owen, looking up at him with wide eyes but trying not to look at a puppy dog. I know him. I knew that he would want to protect me if he could. But I had to hope that he would realize how serious I was about this. Technically, we weren't together. I could help him. I needed to help him.

"No," he answered with a shake of his head. "Kidney lac is large and I want to get in there to stop the bleeding, see if there's anything else going on."

"We should get him up to the O.R." But I know that's not an option right now.

Owen glanced at me, clearly worried about the both of us. "I agree," he nodded. "But there are no ORs available right now and it's going to stay like that as long as the generator is down. The best that we could for him right now is going to be right here."

"Can we do the surgery right here? Keep him from bleeding out anymore?" I asked. I knew it was possible but whether or not he would agree was something else.

"We could," he answered hesitantly. "But I don't think that you should do this, April. You're too close."

"What are you talking about?" I questioned quickly.

"I know how you feel about him, April." Do you? "He's your best friend. I wouldn't let you do this any more than I would let Cristina do a surgery on Meredith. You guys are practically family and we can't let family operate on family." As much as I loved Jackson and appreciated the momentary recognition, right now, it just felt like a complete load of crap.

"That's– no, no, no." I shook my head. "You need another set of hands and it's chaos and just, let me help you, okay?" I wet my lips, pleading with him.

"It is chaos and I don't need an attending trauma surgeon to assist me, April. There are other patients in need right now who you can do more good than assisting me with Jackson, okay?" One hand pulled away from Jackson and he placed it on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

I took a deep breath, nodding my head. "Okay. Just let me know when you're done, okay?"

"Sure thing," Owen agreed.

Wiping the back of my hand across my eyes to clear the tears that had formed there, I looked around the E.R., trying to figure out where to start. Callie was overwhelmed with the number of compound fractures that had come in – Bailey had run off somewhere for medicine and it looked like she still hadn't returned yet. Agonized people carried out in pain. Owen was right, there was plenty to be done here.

Occupying myself with the different patients in need takes my mind off of Jackson. Mostly, at least. There's no way to entirely push him out of my mind no matter what I'm treating. He was my best friend. I couldn't lose him. I didn't know how to go forward if I lost him. I loved him. That much was clear, no matter who I was supposed to be marrying.

Time speeds along at a decent pace because of it, fortunately. Fractures are set and Bailey came along with the medication to the relief of many of the patients stuck here.

Keeping track of the time on my watch, I try to be patient and give Owen time before I go to see what's going on. I know how long the procedure should take, both according to the standard and for years of working under Owen's guidance. It was taking longer than it should have. I knew that. I could only sit back on my heels and wait for so long.

"Owen!" I catch up with him, pulling off my gloves. "How's it going? How's he doing?"

"I'm still working on him," he answered without looking up at me, brows furrowed in concentration. I squinted at his work. There was a lot of blood. Predictable, but maybe more than there should have been.

"What's taking so long?" I pestered.

"More blood than expected." His answer confirmed my suspicions. "I fixed the kidney but there's bleeding coming from somewhere else," he explained.

"Let me help you," I begged, chewing on my lower lip.

"Fine."

I let out a breath of relief when he finally caved into my pestering, putting on a fresh trauma gown and pair of gloves before moving opposite to him across the table. There was a lot of blood. It takes a little time for us to realize that it's a laceration in his bowel and I quickly stitch it up, making sure that every little bit of the silk sutures is done perfectly.

That had clearly been the source of the excessive internal bleeding. When that was made clear, I gave a slight smile despite the circumstances. Some blood loss, but he would be okay. He'd have to take it easy for awhile, surgery the minor concussion. But he would be fine.

"We'll need to move him out of here." Owen murmured once we had closed him up.

"I'll take him," I volunteered quickly.

Owen gave a nod of his head and ripped off his gloves, tossing them to no doubt tend to some of the others in the emergency room. I pushed the bed out of the trauma room so someone else could bring in, hoping there would be room upstairs in post-op. It was better for him, safer. Less likely to get some infection.

To my relief, there was an empty room. Paperwork could be dealt with later. Instead, I take his vitals and write all of them down on a paper chart, hanging it on the end of his bed. Though he was a little dirty looking, it would have been clear for any of the nurses to tell exactly who he was. I was convinced half of them had a crush on him. That alone would give him a little extra treatment. Maybe it was wrong, but at the moment, it brought me some comfort.

Once everything that I could do for him as a doctor was done, I paused. It didn't feel right leaving him alone. It didn't feel right going to get Edwards for him, either. I wanted to be here. Wanted or needed. I couldn't tell the difference.

"I'm here," I murmured, dragging the chair over to him. I couldn't stay forever, but I could for a minute. Both my hands wrapped around his and I dropped my head against our hands.

"You're going to wake up soon," I started. "You're going to wake up and be confused, and I'm going to hopefully be right here. You're such a good man. You could have died, Jackson. You could have died. All because you went back to save that little girl. And she's fine, because of you. Because of how selfless you are. But I'm not letting you be a martyr. You're going to wake up and complain about being a patient and having to take time off of work." I squeezed both his hands. "I love you. I know you can't hear me right now, but I do, Jackson. I love you."

The words were much easier to say when his beautiful seafoam eyes weren't staring back at me. He couldn't hear me, but I wanted him to know. One step at a time. There's still Matthew and Stephanie, but it didn't matter. This proved that. I loved him and I couldn't live without him.

"I have to go now," I stood up, taking a deep breath. "But I'll be back. I promise."

There was something that I had to go first. Something that didn't involve patients, but it did involve pain.

The emergency room had calmed down some between helping Owen with Jackson and taking him up to the room – everyone had been triaged at least, priorities clear. One less thing to worry about. I run my hand over my frizzy hair, pushing it out of the way and looking around. There he was.

This wasn't going to be easy. Even if my mind was made up, it wouldn't be.

I liked Matthew. He was the kind of man that my parents would have always expected me to settle down with, and they had been thrilled with my engagement to him, even if they had only ever met him over Skype. He was good and Christian, perfect on paper, both in terms of who he was and as a match for me. But he wasn't like Jackson. He didn't light up my world in a different way, give me a new and better perspective on life. He didn't challenge me to be better. There was happiness, but there were no butterflies. Jackson always gave me butterflies.

"Hey, do you have a minute?" I snuck up on him, grabbing his arm.

"Yeah, sure," Matthew nodded, walking alongside me. "How's Jackson?" He asked.

"He'll be okay." A smile flickered across my expression. "But uh, we need to talk about us."

There's a pause. He already knows. "It's still him, isn't it?"

"It is," I answered, taking a deep breath. "And I'm so sorry, Matthew, especially to do it at a time like this. I am. But it's still him and it's always going to be him. It wasn't right of me to say yes to you and I'm so sorry for that." I pulled the engagement ring off of my finger, handing it out to him. He paused before accepting it.

"Thanks for being honest, I guess." He replied, avoiding meeting my gaze. I couldn't blame him for that. I was just grateful that there was enough going on that I could walk away from this conversation quickly.

"There's uh, work to do still." I reminded him, wetting my lips. "I should get going."

With that out of the way, I get back to work, feeling a little lighter. Jackson was fine. Matthew was out of the picture. There was still Stephanie, but… I had seen the way that he was looking at me when we got engaged. I think he still loved me. But I won't know until I talked to him.

Too much time is spent down in the emergency room, monitoring patients and making sure that everything is accounted for. I wanted to do the best that I could, but it was harder to focus than I wanted to admit to. I wanted to be by his side, be there when he woke up. I wanted to declare my love for him, no matter the timing or the inconveniences that may have seemed like they were there. I couldn't keep going like things were the same. Not when he had almost died like that.

Making sure that everything was under control downstairs, I get Owen's permission before heading back up to post-op to sit in my room. I don't know how to feel when he's still asleep there, but at least Stephanie wasn't there. Oddly, and selfishly, it was something to be happy about. Very, very selfishly.

I find myself sitting by his side again, taking the same hand that I had held onto earlier.

"Hi again," I murmured, resting my head on the edge of the bed. "I hope you wake up soon."

Despite myself, I fall asleep there. I had been working too hard and for too long with the storm, and even if it wasn't that comfortable of a position to be in, it's far too easy to fall asleep there.

Jackson's hand moving and adjusting was the thing to wake me back up.

"Hey," he muttered, clearly exhausted.

"Hi," I perked up instantly, sitting up but still holding onto your hand. "Do you remember what happened? How do you feel?" I bombarded him, unable to hold myself back.

"The bus exploded," Jackson muttered, letting out a cough. I'd checked for smoke inhalation, soot, of course. I was sure that Owen had, too, but it was a mistake that I was never going to be able to forget, and certainly not one that I was ever going to repeat. I stood up, getting him a glass of water. I guided it to his mouth, not wanting him to move.

"Do you need anything?" I asked, wetting my lips.

"I'm fine, Apes," he gave me half a smile. "You haven't been here all night, have you?"

I nodded. "Working mostly, though. I've been running around. There's a lot going on with the storm and the bus explosion and the power being out but it's calmed down some now, at least."

He smiled at me, relaxing against the pillow. He didn't seem to be in pain.

"There's something else, though. I need to talk to you." I sat back down again slowly.

"What's up?" Jackson asked.

"I love you." I blurted it out thoughtlessly. "I love you and I want you. I haven't been fair to you, I know, and I've–I've really hurt you." The words tumbled out of my lips and water swelled in my eyes immediately, blinking a few times to try and hold it back.

"And you're getting married." He appointed out.

"When that bus exploded and I thought you were gone, I…" I don't even know how to begin to express what I had felt, but he spoke again before I had to.

"You're getting married," Jackson repeated.

"No, no I'm not," I responded, swallowing. "I broke up with Matthew."

He stared at me for what felt like an impossibly long moment as he processed my words, and I wasn't quite sure what else to say. Why I had broken up with him was already clear. I loved him more than I had ever loved Matthew. That much had been made clear. I should have never settled but it had seemed like the right thing at the time. But it wasn't. It had never been.

"You really broke up with him?" He questioned.

"Yeah," I answered, nodding my head. "He's not… he's not what I want. That's you. And it's always been you. I know that this has all been so crazy and I haven't treated you the way that you deserved but at the end of the day, I still love you. More than him, more than anything else. And I think that's worth giving a shot."

"Do you really want to be with me?" The questions continued. I gave a nod of my head. "I'll have to talk to Stephanie. You know that. We were in a real relationship." Jackson said.

"O–okay." I stuttered out. "But… we can do this? You're really willing to go all in?" I asked, needing him to be crystal clear with me. I loved him. But I needed to know that he loved me too.

"I was always ready to do that with you, April," Jackson answered earnestly. He gave a slight groan as he pushed himself to sit up, and I hovered over, ready to help him at a moment's notice. "And that hasn't changed. You know what Mer and Cristina say. You're my person."

I sniffled, blinking back a few more tears and giving a small nod of my head.

"Yeah, you're my person too."


End file.
